How to create a temporary directory and get the path / file name in Python

Question

how to create a temporary directory and get the path / file name in python

Answer 1

Use the mkdtemp() function from the tempfile module:

import tempfile
import shutil

dirpath = tempfile.mkdtemp()
# ... do stuff with dirpath
shutil.rmtree(dirpath)

Answer 2

To expand on another answer, here is a fairly complete example which can cleanup the tmpdir even on exceptions:

import contextlib
import os
import shutil
import tempfile

@contextlib.contextmanager
def cd(newdir, cleanup=lambda: True):
    prevdir = os.getcwd()
    os.chdir(os.path.expanduser(newdir))
    try:
        yield
    finally:
        os.chdir(prevdir)
        cleanup()

@contextlib.contextmanager
def tempdir():
    dirpath = tempfile.mkdtemp()
    def cleanup():
        shutil.rmtree(dirpath)
    with cd(dirpath, cleanup):
        yield dirpath

def main():
    with tempdir() as dirpath:
        pass # do something here

Answer 3

In python 3.2 and later, there is a useful contextmanager for this in the stdlib https://docs.python.org/3/library/tempfile.html#tempfile.TemporaryDirectory

Answer 4

In Python 3, TemporaryDirectory in the tempfile module can be used.

This is straight from the examples:

import tempfile
with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as tmpdirname:
     print('created temporary directory', tmpdirname)
# directory and contents have been removed

If you would like to keep the directory a bit longer, then something like this could be done (not from the example):

import tempfile
import shutil

temp_dir = tempfile.TemporaryDirectory()
print(temp_dir.name)
# use temp_dir, and when done:
shutil.rmtree(temp_dir.name)

As @MatthiasRoelandts pointed out, the documentation also says that "the directory can be explicitly cleaned up by calling the cleanup() method".